This writer has learned, or noticed, that the word ‘account‘ is often used to describe numbers in IELTS Task 1 writing.

Well, that’s a step in the right direction, but he or she now needs to do some more noticing. And to speed up noticing, we need many many examples!

Take a look at (print?) these examples. Then answer the following questions.

What word nearly always follows accounts when accounts is a verb)? (answer)

What kind of data always follows accounts for when accounts for is describing data? (answer)

Now that we know more about account (we have noticed more), we can see that the use of account in the opening example is inappropriate because the data being described is the wrong kind of data. We cannot use accounts for to give an objective description of a number in a graph, table or chart.

We saw in the examples that accounts for is part of the structure:

Something accounts for something.

OR

X accounts for Y.

Look at the pie chart below. Refer again to the examples and see if you can make a sentence about Firefox using accounts for. As you write, think also about the time frame and what tense you need to use. If you like what you’ve written, please add it as a comment below this post!

1. ‘Accounts’ is always followed by ‘for’.
2. The data that follows ‘accounts for’ is a percentage.